Who We Are: Karen Baker

I have several roles; I am the OEM Channel Manager, as well as Retail Channel Manager. I have been here for just over 26 years, and have had a lot of responsibilities during that time. I started in Customer Service and became Anthro’s first salesperson four months after I started. In addition to my current sales roles, I have worked in Reseller and Corporate Sales, as well as done PR.

What's your favorite thing about Anthro Corporation?

The openness of communication about how the company is doing, and lots of vacation time!

Tell us something that happened while working at Anthro that you haven't forgotten.

There are so many things! I mean, I have 26 years of memories. Here are a few:

Learning about relationships that have formed at Anthro— lots of dating and quite a few marriages.

I’ve learned that all is not fair in business. Sometimes you feel you have a great relationship with a customer and that’s not enough to keep them as a customer.

Friendships formed at Anthro often last a lot longer than the co-worker relationship. My best friend is someone that worked at Anthro 24 years ago. We only worked together for about two years, but our friendship has lasted much longer.

What's one thing most people don't know about you?

I would be surprised if there was something someone didn’t know— I’m an open book!

On a scale from 1 (it was torture) to 10 (it was great), how would you rate your experience as an Anthro model?

I don’t mind being a model at Anthro. In fact, it was my suggestion, 25 years ago, to show employees in our catalogs. I thought we needed people in our product pictures. I do remember going to a customer site once, and they had defamed our catalog and written conversation bubbles beside everyone’s picture.

Check back next month for another Q&A with one of our employees. In the meantime, meet Michael Morris, our Senior Graphic Designer on the Creative Team.

Maggie Summers writes about educational technology, healthcare IT, and healthy living for Anthro Corporation, a leading designer and manufacturer of furniture for technology in Portland, OR.